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Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Kawaii - meanwhile in japan

You might have heard this word from the world's must famous wapanese person, Gwen Stefany. Or may be some crazy anime fans? Or those crazy-about-japan- type of people that you can find at every school in the world .But what is Kawaii? Where did this magical style came from? What does it mean?

Let's start with the basics. According to the first definition on Urban Dictionary :"An adjective in Japanese meaning " pretty; cute; lovely; charming; dear; darling; pet" It's stem is two kanji meaning "can love".

Kawaii has been strong in Japan since the 1970. The cuteness not only took place in fashion, but in mannerisms, behaviors, food, basically the every day life of young women and men and even adults. Japan adores Kawaii more than a gossip magazine worships idiotic blonde celebrities with lazy eyes and sex tapes.

Does hello kitty ring a bell? Japan take the cuteness so seriously that they even have ambassadors of cute. The ministry of foreign affairs hired this remarkable three ladies ,that are notorious for being super Kawaii, to travel around the world and spread the cute. Sounds like the best job ever.

Ambassadors of cute(lef6t to right) Misako Aoki,Yu Kimura and ShizukaFujioka

Look at the picture. The girls look so graceful and polished that i want to hug them and name my adopted kittens like them . But how a country with the scariest pornography in the world can have such a strong adorable movement? Your western mind might find this bizarre, but it was rebellion.

In the 70's young girls started writing in a child-like manner, in a westernized way and decorating with hearts or flowers. School banned this calligraphy method because it was infantile and did not respect traditional Japanese writing. But the movement developed even more. Teenagers thought that adulthood was harsh, difficult and hostile, so they rebelled by acting like kids.Not annoying screaming kids, but adorable sweet girls with rainbows and kittens kind of thing. It didn't took a second for companies to create cute items like hello kitty and for musicians to start acting that way ( notable example: Seiko Matsuda) . The style is well alive today and even police offices have cute mascots.

Seiko Matsuda wearing lovelly child like clothes.

And how does this movement translate to fashion? well.... it's just everywhere in the streets of Japan. As you can see in the picture with the ambassadors of cute, they don't have an specific fashion style. The only rule of kawaii, i would say, it's to be cute. School girl uniform, sweet lolita style, 50's dresses with cupcakes, pink outfits full of cute accessories. It can be simple to over the top. After all, it's a movement that was born from a polite rebellion to be free from the adult world, so kawaii shouldn't have rules.

All types of kawaii

This is over the top cute. You might find it crazier that cute, but think with you inner kid and look at all those pom-poms,pink puddle and stuffed animals.This particular style is called Decora and it's considered kawaii.

shouldn't have rules.

On a different note: Misako Aoki wearing a very simple yet really cute dress. We are talking about the ambassador of cute in here.

Here is Aoki and a famous japanese model dressing with typical lolita dresses